Egbert Bakewell. 
29 
ment of sheep ancl cattle, he was open at least in respect of his 
horses. George C alley authoritatively relates the circumstances ; 
the return of the Earl of Huntingdon from an Embassy to the 
States-General with a set of black coach horses, mostly stal- 
lions, which became sires of horses of a capital stamp, bred by 
the Trentside tenantry ; the excursion of Bakewell, many years 
afterwards, with Mr. George Salisbury, in search of the breed 
on the Continent; their return with Dutch or Flemish 
mares, and Mr. Bakewell’s use of some of the imported mares 
to improve the old black breed of Leicestershire carthorses. In 
the year 1785, as we learn from several sources, he had the 
honour of exhibiting his famous black horse to the King in the 
courtyard of St. James’s Palace ; but a horse named K., 
which died at the age of nineteen years in the same year in 
which he took the “ famous ” horse for his Majesty’s inspection, 
is described by Marshall as a far grander animal, “ the fancied 
war-horse of the German painters,” a horse under whose magni- 
ficent forehand “ a man of moderate size seemed to shrink, and 
whose head and neck were carried so high that his ears stood, 
as Mr. Bakewell said every horse’s ears ought to stand, per- 
pendicularly over his fore feet.” Derbyshire, the same writer 
stated in 1796 (the year after Bakewell’s death), had been for 
some time indebted to Leicestershire for the best black cart- 
horse stallions. So recently as the year 1858 an animal was 
exhibited at the Chester Meeting of the Royal Agricultural 
Society of England as a descendant and representative specimen 
of Bakewell’s stud. 
Bakewell appears to have extended to his horses the letting 
system adopted for the disposal of his surplus bulls and rams. 
He is said to have let stallions for 100 guineas and up- 
wards; another authority says from 25 to 150 guineas. At 
home the fee was 5 guineas. One of the leading chroniclers 
remarks that he bred the horse like the ox in form, thick and 
short-bodied, with very short legs. Bakewell himself used to 
say that bad drawing horses were made so by bad management. 
All his were perfectly gentle and willing workers, slow, but of 
great power. The general practice of the country was to use 
from four to seven horses to the plough. He never used more 
than two, and these, with a Rotherham plough, without a 
driver, turned four acres in the day — four times the work his 
neighbours did with the same strength. 
His pigs are variously described as of Berkshire breed and 
as “ a mix breed sort.” They were bred in-and-in very closely, 
until one observer, either by sight or by hearsay, found that 
